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Oops, wasn't clear, I meant first episode of the new series; I've watched the first two already. As you say takes a while to hit its stride but once it gets going it's great. Think I actually prefer it to the Inbetweeners in that the latter went a little bit too over the top and started to lose the feeling that these were slightly exaggerated version of yourself and others, whereas despite getting fairly ridiculous Fresh Meat never quite loses that feeling at any point.

Premise:
It's 2048, and Karl Urban is a grouchy future cop called John Kennex who returns to work after spending an extended period in a coma, has a synthetic leg as a result of the ambush that landed him in said coma, and suffers PTSD. He visits a black market doctor to repeatedly relive a certain memory. Crime has risen 400%, so all human police officers are required to be partnered with a military grade police android. After Kennex's intial robo-partner suffers an... ahem, accident... they stick him with the only other one available to the department, an older model called Dorian that suffered from emotion emulation problems. The department tech expert is Mackenzie Crook (not much to say about him after the pilot other than that he exists). Biowarfare based hilarity ensues.

Cool stuff:
- Androids.
- Interrogation chamber windows switching from clear to frosted glass at the touch of a button.
- A gun that shoots a gel-like substance into a guys' face to form a mask.
- Dorian injecting a blood sample from a corpse into his own body for a toxicology analysis.
- The evidence locker is so massive it's like the warehouse from the end of Raiders and Segways are used to navigate it.
- Certain music cues in the pilot put me in mind of DX: Human Revolution, and there are inevitable (if not overt) nods to Blade Runner.

They've broadcast 4 episodes so far. I've thoroughly enjoyed the first one, so I shall be marathoning the other 3 tomorrow.

Edited for not waiting that long to watch episode 2:

Almost Human - 1x02 - Skin

- The UV light getting waved over the sex-bot; that is just... ugh.
- "Deckard Gardens Hotel" sign in the cold open.
- "I haven't even been a child and I know that would scare one."
- Animated giraffe!
- I'm 99% certain the set for the sex-bot showroom was the same set as the doctors' office in the pilot of BSG where Laura Roslin was given her cancer diagnosis.
- "You're scanning my balls?!"
- The Vanessa-bot wanting to see its' friend for reasons it couldn't explain... that was saddening.
- Skin-graft lab was a fucking horror show.
- Rudy was a more substantial presence here than in the pilot, but I hope he won't always just be used for comic relief.
- "Where am I going?"

Last edited by Rath; 06-12-2013 at 12:56 AM.

"Men shall never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Diderot

Watching The Prisoner, British sci-fi/surreal show from 1967 right now. It's actually very good and it seems to be inspiration for shows like Lost (ugh) and Twin Peaks, also some songs like Iron Maiden's "The Prisoner" or Devil Doll's album "The Girl Who Was... Death".

The Prisoner was an incredibly highly influential show. I'm very confident there's a quote by J.J saying it was a major inspiration for Lost, but I have a feeling I may be mixing it up with another show (although I wouldn't know which). It's also a show that if made today would probably be lauded for its creativity and production, although hopefully there wouldn't have been as much of a screw-up with the last two episodes as there actually was. That's not to say the last two episodes are bad, as the penultimate one is very, very good (and intense) and the final one is, well...remarkable, to say the least. If you want to have fun with it, try and work out the chronology to it all. A lot of episodes are shown out of order both un and intentionally.

Just watched the one where the Tunisian student broke his banjo string and couldn't help but be reminded of the story a friend told me about when the same thing happened to him while on the job, the difference being that in his case a condom filled with blood. *shudder*

Last edited by Rath; 10-12-2013 at 02:06 AM.

"Men shall never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest." - Diderot

Legend of the Galactic Heroes (銀河英雄伝説 Ginga Eiyū Densetsu?), also known as Gin'eiden (銀英伝?), is a series of science fictionnovels written by Yoshiki Tanaka. In humanity's distant future, two interstellar states - the monarchic Galactic Empire and the democratic Free Planets Alliance - are embroiled in a never-ending war. The story focuses on the exploits of rivals Reinhard von Müsel and Yang Wen Li as they rise to power and fame in the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance.

An anime adaptation of the novels by Artland and Magic Bus ran from 1988 to 2000. There is also a manga based on the novels, with art by Katsumi Michihara. In addition, there are several video game adaptations with the most recent release in 2008 being a real-time strategy game. None of this content has been officially released in the English language. However, fan translations of the anime to English are available.

Legend of Galactic Heroes (Japanese: 銀河英雄伝説, Ginga Eiyū Densetsu), sometimes referred to as 'Heldensagen von Kosmosinsel' (in incorrect German, translating to "heroic tales of cosmic islands"), is a series of ten science-fiction novels written by Tanaka Yoshiki, as well as a number of other, shorter stories set in the same universe. It won the Seiun Award for "Best Novel of the Year" in 1989.

110 episode series (Mercifully, the episodes are 25-30 minute affairs)

3 movies

9 gaidens - i.e. side stories, epilogues, prologues, events not covered during the movies/series, events not covered enough during the movies/series. The gaidens are mini series all of their own essentially but set within the same timeline and/or universe.

The bigger catch: the youtube link above listed everything in story chronological order. For everyone's sanity we watch this in broadcast order as the makers intended. And I have a serial distrust of watching anything chronologically if that's how it was not released. Watching it grow as the makers intended is the first and primary reason though. I can re-order the playlist above as one of my own or list the broadcast order and you're free to do it yourself.

So I had a bit of a binge this week on Dracula. Which I think is pretty good, it's reasonably intelligent though not outstandingly so, the pacing has been pretty good, and it's got the right amount of absurdity to it.
The basic premise is: Dracula has been awoken at the turn of the 20th century (1900-ish), and is masquerading in London as an American Electronics Baron, trying to undermine the work of the "Order of the Dragon" who are apparently all Oil-Barons.

Which is honestly a lot more exciting than it sounds.

I've also been watching Almost Human, which I'm still not entirely sold on. It's had a few moments of quality humour, and most of the acting is solid enough, but the TV show plots are really, really unimaginative. I'll probably stick with it, but I suspect that at this rate it won't be getting a second season.

Attempt no. 2 at seeing if people in this thread are interested in group watching something together as being the last post on the previous page it vanished. :(

I gave the first episode a brief watch to see if I would be interested in this and I'm afraid the presentation was a little too dry for me, it's presented like some kind of faux-documentary record of a war, which was fairly interesting, but the animation was appalling, at least in the first episode and the writing was basic, to say the least.

Obviously it's not entirely fair to judge a gigantic series based on 10 minutes of the first episode. But as much as I like the shows you've listed above, I don't really have time to commit. Best of luck though!

Most the shows I do actually watch seem to have gone on a christmas hiatus (The Walking Dead, Arrow etc) or outright ended (Misfits - which had a very uneven finale, including the most bizarre rape scene in a mainstream TV show you're ever likely to see). Soon it will be the bleak christmas tv landscape populated by drearily cheerful films and re-runs of outdated sitcoms. On the plus side a new series of Justified starts January 7th.

For now I'm watching through Fringe, which I completely missed first time around.